United Way of St. Joseph County taps DoorDash for free deliver to people in need

The app-driven business DoorDash normally sends its drivers to bring local restaurant grub and other goods to your door.

This week, it expanded to also make free deliveries to people in need in St. Joseph County — be it food, clothing, COVID tests, school homework or other needs.

The program, a partnership with the United Way of St. Joseph County, aims at one of the pandemic’s greatest barriers to providing basic needs to people: lack of transportation.

It’s called Ride United: Last Mile Delivery. For now, DoorDash will deliver goods from six local agencies to their clients — up to about 500 deliveries per week, United Way CEO Laura Jensen said.

“One of my biggest regrets through the whole pandemic is we didn’t have the capacity to provide home deliveries,” Marijo Martinec, CEO of the Food Bank of Northern Indiana, said. “This is a first step.”

The first deliveries came Tuesday as 10 drivers lined up at the Boys & Girls Clubs of St. Joseph County and drove a portion of 456 coats and 252 pairs of shoes — all donated from the nonprofit Operation Warm — to 94 families in Mishawaka. The Clubs’ CEO, Jacqueline Kronk, said the rest of those goods for kids and family members will be delivered in phases elsewhere in the county — and much more quickly than the weeks it may have otherwise taken staff to parcel them out on site or drive them to families.

For the most part, Jensen said, clients will sign up for the delivery through the agency that’s sending the goods. If the client is already a DoorDash customer, she said, they’ll need to avoid using the company’s app for that trip so that it doesn’t charge their account.

DoorDash and the United Way Worldwide started Ride United: Last Mile Delivery during the pandemic in 2020, so far making more than a half million free deliveries. This is the first United Way in Indiana to offer the deliveries, Jensen said.

It doesn’t cost the local United Way or agencies anything except the time and labor to coordinate it, she said. Each driver is paid, thanks to funding that’s lined up through United Way Worldwide, primarily sponsored by corporations and foundations.

A DoorDash spokesman said that tips aren't included in the pay, but, because the pay is grouped into larger batches, the earnings end up about the same as other sized orders. The so-called Dashers can turn down orders if they like.

United Way officials say the program could last indefinitely, and more deliveries could eventually be added per week if extra funding is secured.

When the United Way Worldwide offered it last year, Jensen said, the timing was right. The local United Way had paid for a van for the Clay Church Food Pantry, which that pantry needed to deliver food to its clients, underscoring the transportation gap.

“It’s really a simple solution,” Jensen said.

She feels it also reduces the stigma of seeking help, because, she said, “You don’t have to load the children up and go to the food pantry.”

But she said there are also icy, snowy days when senior citizens shouldn’t be out driving to get food.

The program also fits with the Lyft and Uber rides that United Way supports for clients of 13 local charitable programs, a partnership with the city of South Bend, Jensen said.

The South Bend Community School Corp. hopes to get its deliveries started in another week or two, sending homework materials, books, a forgotten Chromebook and other goods that students need while they are stuck at home, detained by an illness or COVID-19 infection, said Brandon White, assistant superintendent of academics.

Such goods often linger in the school office, delaying the students’ ability to catch up until they return — sometimes for several days, White said.

The service also could deliver the COVID-19 home tests that the schools have to potentially sick kids, he said. The school district is still working out a way to eventually deliver school meals to absent students, too, similar to what it had provided earlier in the pandemic.

Key contacts for the deliveries, White said, have been established at each school.

Martinec said the Food Bank is still figuring out how it will communicate with and arrange for its on-site food pantry clients to use the deliveries. Out of the two visits per month that clients can make to the pantry, the charity may allow one delivery.

Martinec hopes to start its deliveries in February or, if not, by March.

“We think it’s going to be very beneficial to people that need it,” she said, noting how people have said they needed food but lacked a car to make it to the pantry, which is a drive-thru.

Other agencies in the delivery program include the Clay Church Food Pantry, the Mishawaka Food Pantry and the United Way’s own People Gotta Eat program that supports local pantries.

Jensen hopes to add more agencies but wanted to start with a few to work out the initial kinks.

United Way Worldwide reports that it has sponsored more than a half million free deliveries through DoorDash since the beginning of the pandemic.

DoorDash started Project DASH to help organizations to “leverage our logistics to increase access in their communities,” Sueli Shaw, the company’s head of social impact, said in the release.

“We’re going to look at it as creatively as possible,” Kronk said, thinking of meals and other items the Boys & Girls Clubs may deliver. “It just seems the perfect collaboration of agencies doing what they do well.”

How to seek delivery

Clients who have transportation issues should contact the participating agencies in this story to make use of the DoorDash delivery, for addresses in St. Joseph County. Otherwise, they can also call United Way of St. Joseph County at 574-282-8201 or toll-free at 211. For these free deliveries, they shouldn’t use the DoorDash app.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: United Way teams up with DoorDash for free delivery